Bean Week 1

As the title will suggest, I have decided to go with the two week bean plan as outlined last week. My reasons for this are threefold:
1) I determined I liked beans well enough to focus on them for another week. And with such wealth of bean diversity, there is still ground left to uncover!
2) I have yet to try the refried bean recipe so highly recommended last week, and I bought all the ingredients for it--so clearly that needs to happen. I also have some uneaten hummus, and have decided chickpeas fall squarely in bean territory.
3) I'm too lazy to think up anything other than "radishes" right now, and its just hard to get psyched up about a week of radishes. You know?

I've been a little busy/distracted this week, and I've been eating beans at random intervals. For that reason, I realize I'm finding it difficult to actually remember what I ate this past week. I worry at forgetting things at such a young age. Sure now its just what bean was in that soup I had last Sunday and the name of those little things at the end of shoelaces (an occasional crossword word), but pretty soon it'll graduate to more important things--the names of pets or the password of this very blog!

Okay, piecing things together slowly...I definitely had some black beans and chicken which was decent. I haven't developed my bean senses enough (or maybe my palette in general) to really tell the difference between beans that readily. Perhaps week two of the bean feast will cure that? At any rate, I suppose black beans go on the good list.

I had some baked beans--the kind with bacon on top--with dinner the other night. That seemed pretty good too. What kind of beans are generally used to baked beans? It again like something I should know. Who knew I was so intellectually unprepared for the rigors of bean week. For all that, the baked beans were decent. I enjoyed the sweetness accompanied with the always enjoyable tell tale taste of bacon grease.

I'm beginning to feel more confident about dubbing the soup beans pinto beans. Of course if my mother (the creator of the soup--as well as most of the bean creations witnessed in this post) comments otherwise, I will print a full retraction. Then henceforth I can refer to this episode as the "pinto bean scandal." As for the potentially pinto soup, it was enjoyable. There was ham in it which lent it a nice flavor. My only complaint is that bean soups are not as easily removed of texture by blending. It seems that even in soup the maintain a certain stoic grittiness. Not unpleasant, per se, but a little damning to my "soup is a panacea for all texture issues" theory.

The other night bean dip was definitely consumed. But again I'm at a loss to determine what kind of beans might have been in it. It was dark, certainly and I instinctively want to say black beans. The dip was delicious and had there not been slightly more delicious spinach dip to its left, I might have eaten a lot more of it than I did.

This is maddening because I know I ate at least two other kinds of beans this week, and I'm at a loss even to remember the species of those I did eat. I know I had a bite of falafel (under the "chick pea as bean" rule posited earlier) yesterday, but then I already liked falafel. Hopefully, I can iron out all these issues in "bean week 2." I can seamlessly add anything from this week that I forgot and no one will have to know that they are secretly part of the somewhat less than illustrious "bean week 1." So yes, welcome to "bean week 2" the week where I learn to write things down.

Next weeek: bean week part deux!